Friday, August 14, 2009

(ArmyTimes.com - Friday Aug 14, 2009 11:59:23 EDT) - President Barack Obama not only wants to improve the treatment of America’s veterans, but also to reach out to homeless veterans, as well as those who have turned their backs on — or are unaware of — the benefits they’ve earned.

“What we’re trying to do is just break down the hurdles that exist between veterans and VA,” Obama told Military Times and a small group of other defense reporters in an Aug. 4 meeting in the White House Roosevelt Room.

But lowering one of those hurdles — creating what Obama called “a VA that is consumer-friendly, that is oriented not towards keeping people out but bringing people in” — will not happen quickly, he said.

“It’s fair to say that this is a multiyear project,” Obama said. “We are going to be working vigilantly. We’re going to keep on pushing. We’re going to keep on prodding to make sure that both VA and DoD understand these very human issues are dealt with in the most thoughtful and effective way as possible.”

As evidence of that effort, Obama and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki touted a boost in VA funding, an increase of 4,000 claims adjusters since January 2007, a total of 18,000 mental health providers, a national suicide hotline, technological improvements in the benefits claims process, the ongoing effort to create electronic medical records that VA and the Pentagon can easily share and a more proactive and helpful attitude at both agencies.

But while hundreds of thousands of vets seek VA care and assistance, Obama said hundreds of thousands more need help but, for a variety of reasons, haven’t sought it.

Shinseki said one thing Obama has asked him to focus on “is homeless vets — 131,000 sleeping on our streets tonight. It’s about jobs; it’s about education.”

It’s also about changing the way VA views its mission, Obama said.

“I think a lot of the reason people fall through the cracks is historically sometimes VA has sat back and waited for people to come to them,” Obama said. “And part of what [Shinseki] has been doing is to make sure that VA is reaching out to them.”

Mental health problems have been overwhelming VA, however, and caregiver demand could outstrip supply despite the recent hires. According to a 2008 Rand Corp. study, an estimated 31 percent of returning war veterans suffer from mental health issues. Only about half of those who need treatment seek it, and only a bit more than half of those who seek treatment get “minimally adequate care,” Rand concluded.

Tackling that problem calls for a multipronged approach, Obama said.

One of the best ways of reducing incidents of PTSD, he said, “is to reduce the amount of time in theater without a break.” To that end, the administration is seeking ways to increase “dwell time” between deployments, has increased the size of the Army and Marine Corps, and is ending the Army’s stop-loss program, through which soldiers’ duty can be involuntarily extended.

Obama also wants better screening of returning troops and for commanders to keep working on reducing the stigma some feel over reporting such problems.

All of this will cost money; his administration has boosted VA’s budget to the tune of $25 billion over the next five fiscal years.

While expenditures won’t solve all the problems, Obama said, “money helps,” particularly in providing enough mental health care — to include ensuring that services for female veterans are available at all VA health centers.

Another potential VA health care challenge in coming years may be the rising tide of respiratory illnesses and blood cancers resulting from exposure to smoke from open-air burn pits used for waste disposal in war zones.

Obama said he is familiar with the issue. Acknowledging the long denials of past administrations over concerns such as atomic radiation tests, Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam and Gulf War illness, he said he wants an objective assessment of the burn-pit problem — the “best science possible.”

“I don’t want us hiding the ball if there’s a real problem there,” Obama said. “I am absolutely convinced that our commanders in theater are doing everything they can to protect their men and women. The key is to understand that our scientific knowledge and our medical knowledge may evolve. And if we find out that something’s wrong, even … it might not have been anyone’s fault … nobody is served by denial or sweeping things under the rug.”

About 91outcomes

91outcomes.com is a health and news website for veterans of the 1991 Gulf War.

The health outcomes of the 1991 Gulf War continue to profoundly affect between one-fourth and one-third, according to official estimates, of the war’s nearly 700,000 U.S. veterans.

They also affect innumerable fellow veterans from our Coalition partners, including the UK, Australia, Canada, and the Czech Republic, to name just a few.

The aim of 91outcomes.com is to provide fellow Gulf War veterans and their caregivers, advocates, and loved ones, with a credible source of information for health information on Gulf War Illness and other news, all in one place, some of which isn't available anywhere else.

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About Me

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Anthony Hardie, the publisher and editor of 91outcomes.com. I created 91outcomes.com in 2009** because I'm also one of the 250,000 veterans of the 1991 Gulf War afflicted by Gulf War Illness, and this is what I choose to do to help my fellow Gulf War veterans. Of course, there's much more that remains to be done -- please feel free to jump in and help however you may see fit to fill those many gaps.

I've been continuously active as a national advocate on Gulf War and other veterans' issues since 1995, shortly after my honorable discharge after seven years of U.S. Army service that included serving in the 1991 Gulf War and Somalia. Later, in part because of that advocacy work, I was selected to be a Congressional aide, and then a veterans’ affairs state agency executive. If you're really interested, you can read more about me on my Google profile.

I also do my best to to help my fellow Gulf War veterans by serving as an affected veteran on the programmatic panel that leads and guides theGulf War Illness Research Program, part of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). And, I'm a former longtime member of VA's Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses (RAC) and the VA’s Gulf War Illness [Research] Steering Committee. In my service on these panels, I do my very best to represent the many other ill and affected Gulf War veterans, including the readers of this website.

**NOTE: Much of the content on 91outcomes is "fair use" content archived for personal use and for single-site archival use by other Gulf War veterans. Articles dated prior to 2009 are archival in nature, and are pre-dated concurrent to the time noted in the article.

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Depleted Uranium (DU) in the Gulf

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